I’m excited to have PCalc for iOS as a sponsor this week. It’s been on my home screen for years and is still the most efficient way to do calculations.
SponsorThis post is about a sponsor's product, PCalc. I've recommended PCalc to many of my friends. It is hands-down the best calculator out there. When I need to do a lot of math, I do it with PCalc. As usual, all of the words and ideas in this post are my own about something I like.
iOS calculators are far outpacing the rate of innovation originally set by HP with their graphing calculators. I was an HP48 lover in the 90s and no calculator has ever given me the same amount of joy.
Tydlig, while impossible to pronounce, is a clever new iOS calculator. While PCalc is the best straight-up calculator, and Soulver is the best contextual calculator, Tydlig is the best visual calculator.
The Tydlig approach is unique.
LemonWallet is an app for storing all of your preferred shopping cards on iOS. It was just acquired by LifeLock. Remember them? They’re the company that claimed to prevent identity theft while their CEO had his identity stolen 13 times.
I used the app twice, forgot about it and deleted it after this news.
A Pinswift bookmarklet (previous review) grabs the current browser page and sends it to the app. Nice.
I subscribe to few periodicals in Newsstand for iOS, so it’s not terribly surprising that my favorite is abandoning the platform. The publisher of The Occasional by Funny or Die has decided that the iOS-only publishing model is a dead-end and they are moving the periodical to the web instead.
This is from the end of the last edition: The Occasional has consistently provided an interesting reading experience through enhanced, yet intuitive, navigation as well as subtle animations.
Here’s another dumb tip that’s too good to not love. I don’t dictate much1 but when I need to know how to spell a common word on iOS or my Mac, the easiest way to look it up is through dictation.2
On a Mac running Mavericks, enable off-line dictation in the preferences. Use the Enhanced Dictation option for best results. Also be sure to check which microphone source you are using.
MindNode 3 for iOS is out now and it’s a huge update.
I’ve been working in concept maps on a daily basis for several years.1 Any project or reasonably complex endeavor starts as a concept map. So I am very particular about the applications I use. MindNode 3 for iOS is one of my favorite applications for working through an idea. It has fluid action for panning and zooming, a gorgeous design and an unbeatable outline view.
I decided not to offer a sponsor post during holiday weeks.1
Instead, here’s some free advertising for stuff I use all the time.2
This is my homescreen on my iPad:
My home screen rarely changes unless an app dies or there is a successor for the function. My writing app or bookmark manager may change but their location on my home screen does not.
I’ll avoid talking about most of the default Apple apps other than to note that if they are on my home screen, it means that I use them about once a day.
My tryst with the Sonos wireless speaker system continues. One of my earlier frustrations involved an extreme edge case. I want to use my Synology NAS as the iTunes library source, instead of my Mac. Luckily the Sonos forums are pretty good.1
Here’s the procedure (for the 3 people that actually care):
Go to the Synology Control Panel and open the Win/Mac/NFS settings.
Turn on Enable Windows file service. You can mess with the detailed settings but here are mine:
From the TextExpander Google Group:
Our only alternative appears to be providing TextExpander data via x-callback-url. User action will be required to acquire and update snippet data. Each app will have its own copy of the TextExpander data, which will not sync automatically with user updates made in the TextExpander touch app. It’s not ideal, but it is within the App Store Review Guidelines. It also means users won’t lose TextExpander touch support in your app.
